The present invention relates to a system and process for producing or treating cylindrical articles and also to an apparatus employable in such system and process. More particularly, the present invention relates to such a system, process and apparatus involved in the production or manufacture of cylindrical supports, hereinafter referred to as cops, for reels or cones of yarn, etc., used in the textile industry.
The production of such cylindrical supports or cops currently is achieved by a manufacturing process essentially including the following four basic manufacturing steps:
1) production of a basic, unfinished tube, normally of cardboard;
2) drying such tube;
3) cutting the tubes cut-to-length; and
4) finishing and trimming.
Special spiral winding machines produce the tubes in continuous pieces having different sizes and wall thicknesses in accordance with particular production needs. Such semi-finished tubes then are cut into several equally sized tubes having a length of approximately 120 to 130 cm, which then are loaded by hand into containers that then are brought to drying equipment to dry or set-up glue applied previously by the winding step. Such drying equipment may be of the chamber or tunnel type, while the holding time in such drying equipment varies according to the wall thickness and type of materials employed in forming the cops. After such drying step, the tubes are carried to a cutter where the dried tubes are cut to their final length according to the actual size requirements, that usually call for a length ranging from approximately 100 to approximately 300 mm. After this cutting-to-length operation, an automatic device transfers the cut-to-length tubes or cops to a "finishing" or "trimming" machine which performs finishing operations on the outer surface and opposite ends of the tubes, or to a boxing or packaging machine. The final trimming or finishing step is necessary to achieve the final characteristics of the product itself, and particularly is employed to provide the final product with required centering marks, yarn fastening slots, as well as rounded end edges of the finished cops. These operations usually are carried out by a finishing and trimming machine, hereinafter simply referred to as trimming machine, although such machine also can achieve boxing or cartoning of the finished cops.
The conventional feed system used to load the trimming machine achieves transfer of one cop at a time by means of a relatively small pneumatic system, i.e. a piston-cylinder arrangement. The use of such a pneumatic system, although ensuring high reliability of transfer of the cops, does not enable high feed rates to be obtained. This is due to the fact that the operation of the piston during each feed cycle includes a backward stroke that does not contribute to feeding. As a result, the highest obtainable feeding rate for such a system cannot exceed approximately 100 to 120 articles per minute.
Therefore, currently employed processes and systems for manufacturing cylindrical cops are rigid and inflexible. As a direct result thereof, and due to the fact that all of the various above described machines normally are arranged in series, i.e. in sequence along a single production line, the highest possible production rate of the entire line cannot exceed the rate of operation of the slowest machine in the line, i.e. normally the trimming machine. In other words, the production rate and efficiency of conventional production lines are limited by the rate of operation of and feed to the trimming machine.
Under practical production conditions and requirements however, the need frequently arises for manufacturing cops of widely varying sizes, i.e. of different lengths, diameters and wall thicknesses. As a result, there seldom occurs a situation that the entire production line can be fully efficiently saturated in all portions and functions thereof, i.e. all of the winding machine, drying machine, cutting machine and trimming machine being operated to capacity at the same time. Therefore, the conventional system inherently involves poor utilization of production capacity due to the practical impossibility of exploiting the full output capabilities of all of the machines of the production line. This inevitably results in an increased unit cost of each of the several types of cops that need to be produced on the production line.
Another factor substantially increasing the unit cost of the cops results from the time that inevitably is wasted when it is necessary to set-up the production line for accommodating new models or versions of the product. In other words, the down time required when the need arises to change the machines of the production line from one model of cop to another may be as high as four to six hours for the trimming machine, while the remaining machines of the continuous production line can be set-up and adjusted to the new requirements in a much shorter time, for example approximately 30 minutes to adjust the winding and wrapping machine to a new size and thickness of the tube and of the cutting machine to cut a different length of the cops. Therefore, down time of the production line in such situations substantially is primarily due to the need for setting up and adjusting the trimming machine to the characteristics of the new product. This generally is due to the fact that the trimming machine is the most complex machine in the production line, due to the numerous trimming operations that it is required to perform.
Thus, the typical and inherent disadvantages of current manufacturing systems and processes for the production of cylindrical supports or cops are the following:
1) The conventional production line is a rigid, single-model line including various machines arranged in series in a sequential arrangement, and as a result the manufacture of products with different final characteristics and initiating from a single feeding line is impractical;
2) The production output rate of the conventional production is limited by the rate of operation of the final trimming machine which normally is fed by pneumatic means;
3) The conventional production line requires substantial set-up times for product model changes. This disadvantage is accentuated by the fact that the actual set-up time necessary for the most complex machine again is the final trimming machine. As a consequence, the resultant very long down times of the entire production line considerably effect both direct and indirect manufacturing costs.